Thinking Inside the Box – Details, episodes & analysis

In today’s episode, I chat with Andrea Herron, Head of People at WebMD, an HR executive leader, published author of "There's an Elephant in Your Office," and host of the award-winning podcast The HR Scoop. Andrea was recently selected as one of Ragan’s Top Women in Wellness and HR, an Agent of Change in American Healthcare Leader magazine, and a Top Leader in DEIB by Mogul. She lives in Portland, OR with her family and french bulldog Norman.

Our conversation began, as many do, with a candid discussion regarding how life is different today than it was in 2020. When the conversation pivoted to mental health, I was eager to learn more.

Prior to her role at WebMD, Andrea was the Vice President, Human Resources at the Oregon Humane Society. Clearly drawn to organizations making a bigger impact in society, I was curious where that inspiration came from. And how it has informed her professional practice. 

It was a really fun conversation. I learned a lot. And I hope you enjoy listening as much as we did recording it.

Andrea Herron


Andrea Herron is the Head of People at WebMD, an HR executive leader, published author of "There's an Elephant in Your Office," and host of the award-winning podcast The HR Scoop.

She was recently selected as one of Ragan’s Top Women in Wellness and HR, an Agent of Change in American Healthcare Leader magazine, and a Top Leader in DEIB by Mogul. She lives in Portland, OR with her family and french bulldog Norman.

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Thinking Inside the Box

Constraints drive innovation. We tackle the most complex issues related to work & culture. And if you enjoy the work we’re doing here, consider giving us a 5-star rating, leaving a comment & subscribing. It ensures you get updated whenever we release new content & really helps amplify our message.

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Matt Burns

Matt Burns is an award-winning executive, social entrepreneur and speaker. He believes in the power of community, simplicity & technology.

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In today’s episode, I chat with Jess Weems Thibault, VP of Growth at HireEducation, a talent service firm that supports education and EdTech partners in the Early Childhood, K12, Higher Education, and Workforce sectors. 

A former-teacher-turned-marketer, Jess works with industry leaders to strategically grow executive, sales, marketing, and product teams in organizations of all sizes with the goal of providing equitable access to education and economic mobility. Jess spent over a decade working in various nonprofit settings, including as a middle-school science teacher. 

I was curious to learn how her unique background influenced her approach to mentoring in the tech and edtech spaces. How she sees technology shaping the future of learning.

It was a really fun conversation. I learned a lot. And I hope you enjoy listening as much as we did recording it.

Jess Weems Thibault

A former-teacher-turned-marketer, Jess Weems Thibault is the VP of Growth at HireEducation, a talent service firm that supports education and EdTech partners in the Early Childhood, K12, Higher Education, and Workforce sectors. She works with industry leaders to strategically grow executive, sales, marketing, and product teams in organizations of all sizes with the goal of providing equitable access to education and economic mobility.

Jess spent over a decade working in various nonprofit settings, including as a middle-school science teacher. She has an MBA from the University of Wisconsin, an MEd in Secondary Science Education, and a BS in Resource Economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

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Thinking Inside the Box

Constraints drive innovation. We tackle the most complex issues related to work & culture. And if you enjoy the work we’re doing here, consider giving us a 5-star rating, leaving a comment & subscribing. It ensures you get updated whenever we release new content & really helps amplify our message.

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Matt Burns

Matt Burns is an award-winning executive, social entrepreneur and speaker. He believes in the power of community, simplicity & technology.

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In today’s episode, I chat with Candace DiCresce, the Senior Director of Safety & Accessibility at Rogers Communications, where she leads a talented team that is driven by a passion for supporting employee safety and well-being. 

Candace has over 25 years of experience in occupational health and safety, wellness and well-being, working in consulting with Deloitte, industry at MDS, and the public sector with the Toronto Transit Commission. 

Her broad view afforded some incredible insights as we discussed her experiences at Rogers, where her team led the strategic integration of safety, disability management, mental health, wellness, accessibility and accommodation into a holistic function that protects and enriches employee physical and mental well-being. 

The walls between work and life have crumbled down. And professionals like Candace ensure what remains is a workplace we all can be proud of.

Candace DiCresce

Candace DiCresce is the Senior Director of Safety & Accessibility at Rogers Communications, where she leads a talented team that is driven by a passion for supporting our employees’ safety and well-being at work and throughout their lives, and for removing barriers. 

Candace has over 25 years of experience in safety, well-being, environmental and sustainability problem-solving, working in consulting, industry, and the public sector including at Deloitte, MDS (a global life sciences company), and the Toronto Transit Commission. 

At Rogers, she drove strategic integration of safety, disability management, mental health, wellness, accessibility and accommodation into a holistic function that protects and enriches employee physical and mental well-being. She is honoured to serve on the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety’s Council of Governors. In 2018, she was recognized as an Innovator in Workplace Mental Health by DiversityCan Magazine.

Candace holds a B.A.Sc. in civil engineering from the University of Toronto, is a proud professional engineer, and is the grateful mother to two weird and wonderful teens. 

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Thinking Inside the Box

Constraints drive innovation. We tackle the most complex issues related to work & culture. And if you enjoy the work we’re doing here, consider giving us a 5-star rating, leaving a comment & subscribing. It ensures you get updated whenever we release new content & really helps amplify our message.

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Matt

Matt Burns is an award-winning executive, social entrepreneur and speaker. He believes in the power of community, simplicity & technology.

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Ben Comstock believes that human connection is key to happiness. It inspired him to build a company dedicated to helping organizations foster community.

As the Founder & CEO of OfficeAccord, Ben has built an online community platform to keep employees informed, engaged and connected. And his timing couldn’t be better. 

The world of work has materially shifted and hybrid work is here to stay. Organizations, seeking to bridge the gap between physical (on-site) and digital employee experiences are increasingly looking to technologies for the solution. 

Ben and I have been friends for a couple of years. We originally met in Copenhagen, Denmark, where I was speaking at a conference. And in amongst all the chaos, we found time to connect in a hotel lobby. He shared his personal story, the journey of OfficeAccord, and I was hooked. 

Beyond our mutual business interests, we have shared values. We talk about the necessary alignment of his business and life. We talk about purpose. And we look to the future. 

Ben is one of those people where you start talking and before long an hour passes by. This was one of those chats and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Ben Comstock

Ben Comstock is an entrepreneur with a passion for creating human connections.  Being adopted from India, raised in Iowa (USA) and having lived in Spain for 11-years has given him a unique perspective on interracial and intercultural relationships which helped him build his HR Tech company, OfficeAccord – a community experience platform. 

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Thinking Inside the Box

Constraints drive innovation. Each week we’ll tackle the most complex issues related to work & culture.

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Matt Burns

Matt Burns is an award-winning executive, social entrepreneur and speaker. He believes in the power of community, simplicity & technology.

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As the Founder and CEO of Voyager’s Table, Jade Leong is redefining what it means to feel truly connected in the midst of a global pandemic. Jade was born and raised in Australia, and has lived in Singapore, Los Angeles, and Seattle. Her adventures have taken her across the world - producing events on 5 continents, from intimate house parties to 100,000+ person festivals. 

Jade has reinvented a business largely predicated on creating memorable in-person experiences, to one solely-focused on digital interfaces. 

It’s a topic I’m particularly interested in as work shifts to a more hybrid setting. How do we create true connection in a dispersed setting? How can organizations and their leaders more closely engage their customers and employees when a screen is the interface? 

These are some of the topics we discuss over the course of our conversation. 

It was an awesome chat. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Jade Leong

Jade Leong is the founder and CEO of Voyager’s Table, a company specializing in event production and project management. Jade was born and raised in Australia but has lived in Los Angeles, Seattle & Vancouver, and Singapore. Her adventures have taken her across the world- producing events on 5 continents, intimate house parties, and 100,000+ person festivals.

Before turning her passions and 20 years of event experience into her full-time venture, she worked as a therapist and philanthropic consultant. When Jade isn’t hosting, curating, and producing events, she’s traveling, eating, drinking, and working towards her goal of becoming a volunteer adaptive snowboard instructor.  She’d love nothing more than to karaoke with you, as long as you’re okay with duetting Endless Love” by Luther Vandross and Mariah Carey… and letting her sing Luther’s part. 

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Thinking Inside the Box

Constraints drive innovation. Each week we’ll tackle the most complex issues related to work & culture.

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Matt Burns

Matt Burns is an award-winning executive, social entrepreneur and speaker. He believes in the power of community, simplicity & technology.

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Alex Murphy is an Entrepreneur, Investor, and Advisor to start-ups and other companies in the Talent Acquisition Technology (TAtech) industry. He is currently the CEO and co-founder of JobSync, creating a simple, seamless, and secure hiring experience for employers and candidates.

Previously, Alex was a Senior Vice President at Beyond.com, Inc.EVP of eCommerce for The Healthy Back Store and Sit4Less.com and was a co-founder of Job.com.

In this episode, we discuss the Job Sync origin story, the forces that led to its inception, and how its solving traditional frustrations in the job search process. 

Not long ago, technology was viewed as the solution; a democratizing force that assured applicants could digitally apply for roles regardless of location. Organizations saw it as an opportunity to streamline their internal processes, enhance record-keeping and automate many of the repetitive, mundane tasks that take so much time. 

Along the way we lost sight of this. It’s a common refrain that the hiring process is now ‘inhumane’. Candidates apply for roles with little hope of acknowledgement and organizations are enslaved to the administrivia necessary to keep systems running. 

Alex wanted to solve these problems; simultaneously enhance the candidate experience and free up time for organizations to connect with prospective employees. 

We chatted about this, though also a number of other relevant, and timely topics, including transparency in advertising. How predatory practices related to fraudulent job postings are a real threat to individual privacy.

And the importance of intentionally embedding equity and inclusion in the hiring process to ensure fairness of opportunity and that ultimately, the best fit for any role is the one who’s selected. 

Alex Murphy

Alex Murphy is an Entrepreneur, Investor, and Advisor to start-ups and other companies in the Talent Acquisition Technology (TAtech) industry. He is currently the CEO and co-founder of JobSync, creating a simple, seamless, and secure hiring experience for employers and candidates.

Previously, Alex was a Senior Vice President at Beyond.com, Inc.EVP of eCommerce for The Healthy Back Store and Sit4Less.com and was a co-founder of Job.com.

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Thinking Inside the Box

Constraints drive innovation. Each week we’ll tackle the most complex issues related to work & culture.

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Matt Burns

Matt Burns is an award-winning executive, social entrepreneur and speaker. He believes in the power of community, simplicity & technology.

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Cheryl Otto is the Founder & CEO of OOPS – Ounce of Prevention Solutions and WIN - the Workplace Investigator Network. She is a happily retired lawyer and an industry expert in Canada in the art of workplace investigations. 

Over her 25-year career, she’s conducted 100’s of workplace investigations, consulted on numerous high-profile cases, and has trained over 1000 investigators. And she's a leading expert on the topic of creating respectful workplaces.

Together, we tackled a challenging topic - workplace investigations. Challenging because the topic can be quite controversial. The truth is the majority of people involved in investigations don't have a great experience. They’re not particularly pleasant. And whether you’re a complainant, witness or respondent - investigations can strain relationships. All the more reason to ensure they’re conducted fairly and with respect. 

And so in our time together, Cheryl and I tackle a number of subjects: how you address complaints regarding high-performing or senior employees; how to identify and overcome bias. And the importance of ensuring humanity in the investigative process. 

Whether we like it, or not, investigations occur in every organization. While most of us come to work with the best of intentions, things don't always go as planned. So we need to create a safe space for people to bring forward their concerns to realize inclusive, respectful, diverse workplaces, where everyone can feel welcome, supported and ultimately safe.

Cheryl Otto

Cheryl is the Founder & CEO of OOPS – Ounce of Prevention Solutions and WIN - the Workplace Investigator Network. She is a happily retired lawyer and an industry expert in Canada in the art of workplace investigations. 

She has conducted 100’s of investigations, consulted on numerous high-profile cases, and has trained over 1000 investigators in her 25-year career. Cheryl has served as a subject matter expert to media outlets, the legal profession, industry conferences, and has refined the workplace investigation process over decades.

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Thinking Inside the Box

Constraints drive innovation. Each week we’ll tackle the most complex issues related to work & culture.

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Matt Burns

Matt Burns is an award-winning executive, social entrepreneur and speaker. He believes in the power of community, simplicity & technology.

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Ryan Frederick is a Columbus Ohio-based serial entrepreneur, author of two books: The Founder’s Manual & Sell Naked, and a product person at heart. 

He’s been part of starting and growing several software and service companies. He’s an angel investor; mentors and advises entrepreneurs and start-ups, as well as corporate innovation leaders. And he helps companies build great software products and solve data challenges for competitive advantage as a Principal at AWH, a product and data consulting firm. 

One of the reasons I launched this podcast was to talk to interesting people like Ryan.

An individual who I wouldn’t come across as I focus on enterprise strategy, digital transformation, and immersive tech.

Which is the exact reason I loved this discussion so much. 

I learned a lot in my 40 + minutes chatting with Ryan. We discussed the human elements of building products. The concept of friction, and more specifically, that the best products have the least amount of friction for their end user.

We talked about customer validation, its critical importance for any product owner, and the necessity to approach it ‘in the negative’. People will answer the questions you ask, according to Ryan. So if you ask people what they like about a product, they’ll answer you. What any product owner really wants to know is what their end users don’t like. That’s the catalyst for continuous improvement. 

It’s a topic that has application in so many parts of our lives, and I’m grateful to Ryan for joining us to illuminate some of the darker corners.

Ryan Frederick

Ryan Frederick has had the privilege of being part of starting and growing several software and service companies. He has helped companies grow from inception to viability, through to sustainability. During the evolution of these companies, Ryan has served on company boards and been instrumental in capitalization activities. 

Ryan combines a unique blend of business acumen and technical knowledge having originally been a developer who migrated to the business side. He now helps companies build great software products and solve data challenges for competitive advantage as a Principal at the product and data consulting firm, AWH.

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Thinking Inside the Box

Constraints drive innovation. Each week we’ll tackle the most complex issues related to work & culture.

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Matt Burns

Matt Burns is an award-winning executive, social entrepreneur and speaker. He believes in the power of community, simplicity & technology.

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Ralph Chapman is a Garland, Texas-based recruitment expert with over 25 years’ of experience. In the last 15 years, he’s specialized exclusively in placing HR professionals. Working with organizational Founders, Boards and CEOs, he has a unique perspective on the evolution of organizations, and more specifically, what they expect from their HR leaders.

The HR profession has undergone an incredible transformation in the preceding 20 years. From administrative, compliance-focused professionals, to strategic, performance-obsessed business partners.

As the pace of change has quickened, Ralph’s been the constant.

The very definition of work is changing; and organizations must rapidly-adapt to become a hybrid; equally adept in both the physical & digital world.

HR professionals are the tip of that spear - tasked with identifying, attracting, hiring, developing & retaining the employees necessary to realize success in this new world. And Ralph is tasked with finding the HR executives organizations need to make this transition.

It’s no small task - every day he’s speaking with Boards & Executive teams who expect more from their HR leaders. And he’s speaking with HR leaders looking to rebrand, retool & re skill in order to remain relevant.

This is the leading edge of organizational change, and over the next 45 minutes, I ask Ralph to share what he’s hearing & seeing. I ask for his impressions of 2020 & what he sees for 2021 and beyond.

If you want a roadmap to how organizations view their talent, this is the episode for you. And it was certainly one of my favourites.

Ralph Chapman

Ralph Chapman has been in recruiting for 25+ years. For the last 15+ years he has specialized exclusively in placing HR professionals. He started HR Search Pros, Inc. 13 ½ years ago because of the need for an HR specific search firm that could truly be a valuable partner for companies looking for great HR professionals and for candidates looking for their next HR opportunity.

He works with HR professionals at all levels, including up to the CHRO/CPO, all over the US (internationally on occasion), in any industry, and any size company.

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Thinking Inside the Box

Constraints drive innovation. Each week we’ll tackle the most complex issues related to work & culture.

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Matt Burns

Matt Burns is an award-winning executive, social entrepreneur and speaker. He believes in the power of community, simplicity & technology.

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Mike Vaughn is a results-driven people leader with 15+ years of experience in complex, global organizations. A trusted business partner, Mike has held numerous HR leadership roles throughout his career, worked globally; including a 3-year assignment in Paris, and most recently held a completely remote role. 

He brings a wealth of experience and a unique perspective to a question facing many of us. What’s next?!

Mike is in the midst of a job search; balancing professional and personal interests against the backdrop of COVID-19, the largest economic disruption of our lifetimes and the unprecedented uncertainty of it all. 

In this episode, Mike and I discuss his search for his next career opportunity, some of the obstacles he’s facing, and what lessons from the past year that he hopes to bring to his next role. 

It was an awesome chat. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.

Mike Vaughn

Mike is a results-driven people leader with 15+ years of experience in complex, global organizations.  Mike is a trusted business partner with a proven ability to coach and partner with senior level executives, build strategic relationships, and work with multiple business units to spearhead large-scale projects. 

Mike has held numerous leadership roles throughout his career including recruiting, talent management and HRBP that has taken him around the world, including living in Paris, France for 3 years where he supported numerous large HR initiatives.  Mike graduated from The Ohio State University with a degree in Communications and currently lives in Charlotte, NC where he has worked remotely for the last 3 years.

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Thinking Inside the Box

Constraints drive innovation. Each week we’ll tackle the most complex issues related to work & culture.

LinkedIn
Instagram
Twitter
Website
Apple Podcasts
Google Podcasts
Spotify
Stitcher
Pocket Cast

Matt Burns

Matt Burns is an award-winning executive, social entrepreneur and speaker. He believes in the power of community, simplicity & technology.

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